regardless of Ace’s mindless hypocrisy, can I say that I am weary, so weary of seeing the painful, beaten, humiliated faces of the wives of these guys standing beside them at their press conferences?

Just once, I’d like to see a guy standing their alone, with the wife having a press conference from her front door saying she’s changed the locks and thrown his shit on the front lawn.

Me too. Laws against prostitution are stupid, as so well pointed out by Anne Laurie and D. Sidhe and OTB above … but a prosecutor and a governor is supposed to enforce the law as it is, and if it should be changed, to work to change it — not to take the attitude that it shouldn’t apply to him. And the reality is that Spitzer’s wife and family are now humiliated and embarrassed, and so are the Democrats — which is why he should resign and get the hell out of the way before his stupidity has even worse effects on the election than it has already.

As for the wife ’standing by’ her husband, that always shocked me. As my own wife pointed out last night, if that had been me, I would be conducting a press conference from an intensive care ward of the nearest hospital, after she finished with me.

It may surprise you to learn that some men, and many women, including me, have at times assessed the job situation rationally and concluded that all jobs involve selling your time and talent to someone, and that sex is a talent we may have to sell. Not all prostitutes are forced into it, and some people with legal jobs *are* forced into them, and something needs to be done for all of those people regardless of the legal status of their job.

Meanwhile, the illegal status of prostitution itself causes serious problems for an awful lot of people who are not, in fact, doing anything that harms society… Legalization will absolutely solve many of those problems, at which point those women (and again, men, but you seem primarily concerned about the women) will be treated *less* like slabs of meat and more like businesspersons with a marketable skill.

I don’t know if that will make non-prostitutes less likely to be treated as slabs of meat, too, but it probably can’t hurt, going on your theory which seems to be that the existence of women who are treated like slabs of meat means all women are treated that way.

Brava, D. Sidhe!

The “think of Teh Women” anti-legalization folk parallel the Total Temperance People. There are a lot of alcoholics in my family tree, and they have done some very bad, reprehensible, un-life-affirming, even highly illegal stuff while chemically altered. As a result, I choose not to drink alcohol. This doesn’t mean I think everyone should choose not to drink alcohol, or that people with alcohol-abusive family histories should be forced to abstain, or that alcohol consumption should be made illegal to protect Teh Children and other innocents from drunk drivers & mean-drunk parents. Because even though it’s possible to live a long & fulfilling life without beverage alcohol, “drinking” is something that a great many adults enjoy, and it’s been experientally demonstrated that criminalizing alcohol consumption doesn’t work. In fact, Prohibition very clearly demonstrated that making alcohol illegal gave organized crime a new and permanent niche in American society without much reducing the number of American alcoholics.

It’s also very obvious that criminalizing sex work only punishes the sex workers (and occasionally their customers). You can live a long & fulfilling life with having sex with another human, but again, most people prefer not to do so. And some of those people prefer to rent their partners on a per-job basis. I’ve been fortunate never to have to consider trading my sexual talents for money, but I’ve certainly had jobs (white-collar, indoor, “clean” jobs) where my bosses considered me the human equivalent of a Burger King sandwich. Some of these bosses, I’m fairly certain, would cheerfully spend a lot more than they paid me to “access” a sex-for-hire worker from a really High-Status organization like the Emperors’ Club… because, as my granny would say, “People will pay more for their pleasures than they will for their obligations.”

Frankly, things haven’t really changed that much since George Bernard Shaw wrote “Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” And it’s kind of sad we’re still hearing the same tired arguments more than a century later.

(P.S. to SWIH: Of *course* I care, sweeties, but I don’t think Mr. Spitzer would have bothered to fly in any ’special assistants’ when your local pulchritude level is so high…)

Makes sense.

Repeated just because it states their level of discourse SOOO perfectly and, for that reason, it’s so funny. They should have this message spelled out on the side of derrigibles and trailing from banners behind bi-planes.

Forget the machinery — Ace and his fellow cobaggers, er cobloggers, should have their favorite rhetorical device tattooed across their abdomens, so they can just lift their shirts whenever they need a “quality comeback”. Given the size of Ace’s abdomen, the inker will be able to use a very elaborate, even multi-colored, font and still have the words remain readable from across the room.

As for Spitzer’s “poor wife”… unlike Mrs. Vitter, I don’t remember Mrs. Spitzer bragging on camera about “Bobbiting” her spouse if she ever caught him using the little head outside of their church&state-sanctioned relationship. Personally, as a married lady myself, I’d love to see one of the Wronged Partners stand up and say on camera, “I don’t give a shite what he was spending his ‘fun money’ on, and if I did, it would still be none of you vultures’ damned business. Go spend some time finding out why the NSA was wiretapping Democratic politicians “on spec”, and maybe then I’ll let you claim to be journalists, you lazy panty-sniffers. Because Elliot could have boffed every sex worker in the continental United States, and still have screwed a lot fewer Americans than Dubya Bush and his fellow criminals.”

Further up the thread, JohnnyRingo believes that prostitution is linked ineluctably to people-trafficking, and is “a system that literally cannot exist without some pretty disgusting human rights violations”.
Now my impression is that countries that decriminalise prostitution (e.g. New Zealand) find it a lot easier to fight people-trafficking and impose workplace standards.

But what Spitzer did was both criminal and hypocritical. I don’t support prostitution laws, but neither would I frequent prostitutes even if I had the money and/or the inclination: it’s the law. Not just “the law” in the sense that the sodomy law was, either; there’s a legitimate public policy argument for it. He didn’t have to deny his entire being to avoid that temptation. He vigorously enforced the damn thing himself, when it was lesser men and women in the dock.

No, I’ve got no sympathy for him whatsoever. He was supposed to be, above all, a scrupulously honest and ethical man. We admired him. You cannot come down from that and still have a part to play in public life.

He has shamed his party and his state, and he needs to disappear for a few years. I’ll welcome him back when the wounds have healed and he wants to be chancellor of a law school or something. But he needs to resign, NOW, and everyone suggesting that he not do so is seriously misguided.

And in political terms: we’ve got a terrific Lt. Gov. who would immediately erase all memory of this scandal if he assumed control, leaving the hapless GOP to try and put Jeanine Pirro or someone up as sacrificial lamb in three years. Is Spitzer worth losing that?

I have no idea what you’re getting at here. Are you blaming whores for sexism? Or prostitution in general? Because believe me, it’s an effect, not a cause. Do you also blame injured patients for malpractice?

You’re apparently also, based on your talk about who should be breeding and who shouldn’t be, opposed to surrogacy, sperm banks, and any of the methods that allow infertile people to have children, as well as contraceptives. And you seem to believe that prostitutes will have a client’s baby.

Now, I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that probably none of that is true, it’s just a meanspirited reading of your words turned into something you may view as a personal attack by a stranger. Which, congratulations, is what you did to atheist.

It may surprise you to learn that some men, and many women, including me, have at times assessed the job situation rationally and concluded that all jobs involve selling your time and talent to someone, and that sex is a talent we may have to sell. Not all prostitutes are forced into it, and some people with legal jobs *are* forced into them, and something needs to be done for all of those people regardless of the legal status of their job.

Meanwhile, the illegal status of prostitution itself causes serious problems for an awful lot of people who are not, in fact, doing anything that harms society. As long as it is illegal, many women every year will be beaten by the men who control their marketable time and talent, will submit to rape in exchange for not being arrested or prosecuted or otherwise abused, will have the majority of the money they earn taken from them, will be forced into drug habits, and will have no way of getting out if they decide they want a new job. Some of them will also be killed, and no one’s going to try very hard at all to bring justice for them, since we’re already concentrating so much of our resources bringing justice *against* them.

Legalization will absolutely solve many of those problems, at which point those women (and again, men, but you seem primarily concerned about the women) will be treated *less* like slabs of meat and more like businesspersons with a marketable skill.

I don’t know if that will make non-prostitutes less likely to be treated as slabs of meat, too, but it probably can’t hurt, going on your theory which seems to be that the existence of women who are treated like slabs of meat means all women are treated that way.

I would say atheist is far from the biggest asshole I know. I would say, in fact, that he or she is more concerned about society’s most vulnerable people than a good many people I know, and far more aware of practical measures to help them. Which ranks way higher on the non-asshole scale than blaming the victims of sexism for sexism.

You have got to be, without a doubt, one of the biggest assholes I have read today. I’m sure there are bigger assholes in the world than you, I just haven’t run into any lately.

It isn’t just religious folks against prostitution. It’s people who don’t like being treated like a Burger King sandwich over which some dipshit with too much B.O. and no social skills can “have it his way.” There’s a reason some people get left out of the gene pool when paying for it isn’t an option: they don’t belong there.

Then I realized he was maybe just needing a little hyphen-help there.

Funny.

Hey, here’s an idea:
The House should include retroactive immunity for Spitzer to the FISA “let everyone off the hook because the president promised it was legal even though we have no idea what they were doing, what laws were violated, or who was hurt by it” revisions. I mean, gosh, that issue is just sooooooo complex and difficult that no one can possible explain it to us, so who would even notice if one more person is granted immunity from prosecution in ongoing investigations and court cases?

If we don’t give Spitzer retroactive immunity, the terrorists win.

If one of my married friends was repeatedly visiting hookers, I might say for the sake of social peace that it’s none of my business, but I would still think much less of him. And, if he became more and more brazen — and hence more and more humiliating for the man’s wife and family — the more likely it would become that I would feel compelled to say something.

He forgot to add, “I’m looking at you Derbyshire.”